Just gonna plug Suse that basically does what Red Hat + CentOS (not stream) used to be. Even more so because OpenSuse Leap is now binary compatible, not just source/ bug compatible like the RHEL flavors, the binaries in the Leap repositories are the same ones that are in the SLE repositories and you can switch from Leap to SLE with no issues. Amazing distro, it runs my home lab and would not change it for anything.
I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)
241–250 of 410 posts
Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
The GPL does quite intentionally not require you to provide a public download page (or git access, etc), and this was more or less discussed and a conscious decision by those who came up with the GPL, agreed. Albeit in pre-widespread-internet days when a "public download page" wasn't a thing yet (and the equivalents were much more expensive, thus why they might not have wanted to require that burden). But still. I ag…
Don't forget that the FSF was selling binaries as a fundraising opportunity for a while as part of the Deluxe Distribution they'd sell for $5000, and before that Stallman was selling copies of GNU Emacs on tapes for $250. Selling binaries has always been a business model.
selling binaries, yes.
Trying to prevent people from redistributing the source: no.
(Yes, in an internet world, it's hard to make money selling binaries if people can redistribute source, maybe. the FSF was selling binaries in a different context, for better or worse. You are still welcome to sell binaries. You are even welcome to charge for distribution of source. But the fundamental goal of the GPL is to give users the right to redistribute source without restriction. The FSF never tried to limit that.)
Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue here is the GPL and what does it provide, freedom wise , for a system that is built of other contributors who also released their work under the GPL. It is a bit funny to me that red hat wants to kill off clones of their os and plenty of people think this is ok and seeing it as freeloading because red hat gives back which I would say they may be required based on the GPL and their business model. Could the…
Genuine question (I'm not intimately familiar with all the terms of the GPL) -- does the GPL require you to release the source code to anyone and everyone (even non-customers)?
No but it gives every customer the right to redistribute the sourcecode to software they bought if that code is covered by the GPL under the same terms as RedHat got from their upstream.
It looks like RedHat might be trying to avoid that clause by threatening to stop selling any software to people who might use that part of the GPL.
Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)
#244We started leaving red hat and red hat derivatives (centos) in favor of Debian when they were bought by ibm, assuming things wouldn’t turn out for the best.
While I was never a huge red hat fan, I do regret what’s happening now - I think that having a major corporate backer of open source code was very important. Other companies have since at least partially filled the gap, but still, I don’t like this. I guess that the red hat of the 90s is no longer the same company- time flies.
Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with most of what you said, but: > If that angers you, I heartily encourage folks to build Debian up as the standard we all certify against. Or start your own business that overtakes Red Hat and earns the place RHEL has today. This strikes me as a variation of the "if you don't like Apple or Google's rules, make your own phone" or "if you don't like Youtube's content policies, then start your own video compan…
It's also, as has been demonstrated, wildly impractical for Red Hat to continue exactly as before without others undermining its business. The thing is that everybody is only lobbying Red Hat to make concessions, but nobody's going after Oracle or Rocky or Alma or other clones to say "hey, cool it. Red Hat's trying to keep a business going here. You're undermining their business. If you keep this up, they're going to…
> It's also, as has been demonstrated, wildly impractical for Red Hat to continue exactly as before without others undermining its business.
> The thing is that everybody is only lobbying Red Hat to make concessions, but nobody's going after Oracle or Rocky or Alma or other clones to say "hey, cool it. Red Hat's trying to keep a business going here. You're undermining their business. If you keep this up, they're going to make it harder for everybody to use a free RHEL for non-business situations."
You make some really great points here. I think you've mostly won me over.
Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)
#246Glad to see redhat go down the shitter. I was never a fan, but that's not the reason to hate on redhat. Everything is behind a paywall or a license. They just seemed like another Microsoft, especially when they started licensing Linux on at a per CPU core level. I think the only thing going for it is their support, but in my 20 years in the industry I've only ever used vendor support like once or twice, I've usually…
My interest in RHEL+clones waned when a kernel update didn't play nice with ZFS, DKMS notwithstanding, and then dropped to zero when searches for configuration information began to inevitably lead to paywalled pages on Red Hat's site (also a problem for Wildfly vs. JBoss).
Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two thoughts: > The process of replicating RHEL is so much easier today than ever before. Doing so bug-for-bug requires more effort than it did a few weeks ago. And they're basically doing that work in parallel with Red Hat itself (duplication of effort). Also, making a change like this (forcing Rocky and AlmaLinux to change in the middle of the 9.x release cycle), when the previous change (killing CentOS) was _also_…
Why do bug-for-bug with RHEL at all? Why not turn Alma and Rocky into stable distributions in their own right? If this pushes RHEL into oblivion, why should anyone care? The Debian ecosystem isn't centered on Ubuntu, it's centered on Debian. Comparisons between the two ecosystems are invalid because of this simple fact. It would be nice to see the "Red Hat" ecosystem recenter around something which isn't a direct sou…
> Why do bug-for-bug with RHEL at all? Why not turn Alma and Rocky into stable distributions in their own right?
Because the whole point is for them to be 'compatible'.
Many of the users are running software that needs to be on RHEL/CentOS/Rocky/etc or it won't be supported.
Sure, there are users who just want a stable OS, but the real point of Rocky/Alma is to have a 100% RHEL-compatible, but free distro.
Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless whether Red Hat said it or not, why not call it what it is? Not every CentOS user was a freeloader and the same is true for its spiritual successors. However, a large majority of CentOS users were not contributing back in any way to CentOS or the larger FLOSS community. Secondly, a substantial chunk of those users used CentOS because they wanted all the benefits of Red Hat EL without paying for it. That pr…
> That pretty much sounds like freeloading to me. I'll bite. The value in RHEL was supposed to be in the support. CentOS helped establish and maintain RHEL as the defacto standard that everyone targetted and prevent the development of another. I mean if Debian becomes the default that actual reduces RHEL's value proposition for their paying customers. Reinforcing a platform's dominance is contributing value.
"CentOS helped establish and maintain RHEL as the defacto standard"
Not exactly. Maintain, perhaps, but Red Hat Linux was the standard before RHEL existed and everybody wanted a clone of Red Hat AS/RHEL to continue enjoying the free ride.
Let's also not forget that CentOS had a rocky (no pun intended) few years before Red Hat stepped in later on. A lot of folks gloss over the fact that there were periods of disarray with CentOS that involved some long gaps between updates, a whole kerfuffle about a founder disappearing and the domain ownership being in question...
CentOS, as a project independent of Red Hat, existed for about 10 years. This included several long periods of slow updates to minor versions and long waits for major versions of RHEL. (e.g. it took almost 3 months for CentOS to push out 5.6 after RHEL 5.6, and even longer to get CentOS 6 out of RHEL 6).
Before Red Hat took over CentOS a chief point of criticism was that CentOS took too long to update and the core group wouldn't let new folks in to contribute. (See: https://lwn.net/Articles/435744/ and https://web.archive.org/web/20190402181426/http://www.linux-...)
Now, users have Stream which is pretty much everything you'd have wanted except the ability to claim that it's exactly specific RHEL release. In my book a major improvement, unless what I want is the ability to get support for RHEL from vendors without actually paying for RHEL.
Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)
#249IBM behind the scenes squeezing every drop of value out of Red Hat…sad to see but this will continue
Re: I'm Done with Red Hat (Enterprise Linux)
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read a suggestion that that actually would violate the assorted open source licenses in question, which generally require some version of giving the user the same source as was used to build the binaries they got. Of course, they might be able to just do it on the more permissively licensed packages.
So all it would take is a couple of separate releases of the SC, and you can diff to see the changes.
Yeah, a few well intentioned people could buy copies of RHEL and compare source code releases.